SHADE Newsletter 27th June 2024

Welcome to the sixteenth edition of the SHADE newsletter! 

SHADE is a research hub with a mission to explore issues at the intersection of digital technologies/AI, health and the environment. It is guided by a fundamental question: How should the balance between AI/digital enabled health and planetary health be struck in different areas of the world, and what should be the guiding principles?

The SHADE newsletter comes out every two weeks, bringing you a selection of the latest news, upcoming events, academic publications and podcasts in the SHADE space.

In this newsletter, we highlight the latest on extreme heat and wildfire events. We take a sweep through tools, AMR and the cloud hyperscalers, check in on circular economy regulation in Ireland, call out the lack of progress at the Bonn Climate Conference, take a look at what constitutes ‘good’ medical practice and much more.  We hope you enjoy it!

Please tell us what you like, what you don’t like and what you think is missing at [email protected].   

Highlight on Extremes

• Extreme heat killing more that 100 people in Mexico hotter and much more likely due to climate change says the World Weather Attribution group.

• Analysis of over 20 years of satellite data reveals that the frequency of extreme wildfires on Earth has increased more than two fold over the last two decades with all the implications that holds for human health. This is almost certainly a signal of climate change.

News

• Two new tools to assess digital technologies’ resource consumption. Firstly, CAST’s Green Software Scorecard scans your applications and uses AI to generate a report containing prioritised insights and actions to make your software greener. Secondly, Green Coding AI reports on the resources used by AI models when answering a question: Simply select the AI model and ask your question.

• The Irish government launches a new framework to allow public bodies to buy remanufactured laptops - an EU first.

• As Bloomberg reveals that AI’s energy demands are outstripping the available power supply in many countries, could 1 bit Large Language Models be part of the answer?

• The Global Climate and Health Alliance calls out the lack of progress made at the UN Climate Conference in Bonn.

• Climate change and lack of data are hobbling India’s attempts to eradicate elephantiasis. Although meteorological data is shared, health data isn’t and the situation calls for a unified response.

• Two steps forward in the fight against antimicrobial resistance (AMR), which is exacerbated by climate change. Firstly phage therapy is showing promising results. Secondly a rapid UTI test - this is described as fundamental to getting rid of “just in case” prescribing of antibiotics, a major driver of AMR.

What we’re watching and listening to

• Reducing the risk of the next pandemic: The latest podcast from the One Health Trust looks at measuring pandemic risk and the role of human behaviour and climate change.

• Engaging with the cloud hyperscalers: The latest episode from GreenIO looks at the cloud hyperscalers and Amazon in particular, with ex insider Adrian Cockcroft. Adrian is running a Green Software Foundation project that engages with the cloud hyperscalers to establish a standard for real time carbon emissions from cloud workloads.

• For more insider insight, this episode of Catalyst has a Microsoft insider to help illuminate what’s under the hood of data centre power demand.

• How Green is my AI? from the BBC’s The Artificial Human podcast.

• How to reduce the carbon footprint of your research computing from Nick Souter, who has a background in neuroimaging. This recording of a recent workshop covers all aspects of the carbon footprint and demos green computing tools.

What we’re reading

• Carbon Emissions in the Tailpipe of Generative AI from Tamara Kneese and Meg Young highlight how it is AI’s ‘climate impacts that make it a source of risk to our collective survival’.

• Reassessing ‘Good’ Medical Practice and the Climate Crisis in the BMJ Journal of Medical Ethics asks whether the latest update for Good Medical Practice from the UK’s General Medical Council can really be described as ‘good’.

• Valuation and Perception of the Costs of Climate Change on Health from the Scandinavian Journal of Public Health examines how best to facilitate public understanding of the costs of climate change.

• A case study on Green Algorithms from Health Data Research UK.

• Melissa Gregg examines the new wave of digital sacrifice zones, the politics of corporate sustainability and ‘elite’ computing as played out in the chips industry and how it has ducked environmental responsibility and climate justice.

• This study in the BMJ’s Emergency Medicine Journal undertakes lifecycle impact analyses of different analgesics to reveal their ‘cradle to grave’ environmental impacts.

• Modelling Rift Valley Fever (RVF) events over 14 years against possible geoecological risk factors reveals the widening range of RVF is associated with climate change in East Africa.

• This comment article in Nature Medicine calls for the cellular and molecular mechanisms that underly the health impacts of climate change to be better understood - so a biomarker approach to detect people most vulnerable and so help to mitigate the impact of climate change on human health

• The Importance of Data Quality for building better AI.

Events

• The Climate and Health Africa Conference is happening in Harare, Zimbabwe between October 29th and 31st. August 2nd is the submission deadline for abstracts and for scholarship applications from early career researchers in sub Saharan Africa.

• Future of Health Europe and the AI in Health Summit are co-located in London on the 26th and 27th November. Super early bird rates are available up until July 23rd.

Opportunities

• UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) is looking to fill five vacancies on its Advisory Group for Digital Research Infrastructure (AGD) and one vacancy on its Infrastructure Advisory Committee (IAC). The closing date is August 9th at 5pm UK time.

And finally check out Calculating Empires - an exploration of how technical and social structures co-evolved over five centuries

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